In the article, Caution–Praise Can Be Dangerous, Dweck’s objective was to explain that praising students has a huge impact on performance and their way of thinking. Dweck studied fifth grade students and the effects of different messages said to them after a task. There were three responses: praise for intelligence, praise for effort, and praised for performance (with no explanation on why the students were successful). She described that having an understanding of how praising works could lead teachers to set their students on the right path. In Carol’s opinion the Self Esteem Movement did not produce beneficial results, but rather limited students’ achievement.
Main Arguments:
• Results of students who received praise for intelligence
• Results of students who received praise for effort
• Dweck’s suggestion to what should be said to students in order to generate the best results.
Results of students who received praise for intelligence: The students in this category had negative results after receiving praising. When asked afterwards if they wanted to do the same level of problems or try more challenging ones, they chose the task that would allow them to look smart and do well on. Consequently, while telling a child how smart he or she is, we are sending a message to not take risks and just look the part. Afterwards, these children were given a hard task, which they performed poorly on, and they know longer liked the problems and did not want to practice them at home. Children also felt “dumb” and when given the initial task (in which they did well), they performed significantly worse. Lastly, their opinions of intelligence reflected that it was an innate capacity as though you cannot improve.
Results of students who received...
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...tes how influential the people in a child’s life are in their education. Insufficient praising will distort a child’s view of learning, and he or she may feel “dumb” whenever answering a question incorrectly. In comparison, proper praising will have children understand that a wrong answer is normal during the process of learning. As a future educator, I will take the information I gained from both Dweck and Bayat and apply it to my classroom. My goal will be to have all students have a general comprehension of hard work, and to praise them when they demonstrate their efforts.
Works Cited
Bayat, M. "Clarifying Issues Regarding the Use of Praise With Young Children." Topics in Early Childhood Special Education 31.2 (2011): 121-28. SAGE Journals. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
Dweck, Carol. “Caution–Praise Can Be Dangerous”. American Federation of Teachers. Spr 1999. 4-9.
As Dweck explains, children who are praised for their intelligence does not want to learn hence develop a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset is where people believe that their qualities such as talent and intelligence are essentially fixed traits. Such people would only concentrate on documenting their intelligence instead of looking for ways for developing the same. In addition, these people make the assumption that their intelligence would make them successful. On the other hand, a growth mindset is where people are aware that it is possible to develop their abilities through hard work and dedication. When I was in Grade 7, a teacher encouraged all students that they all had the ability to perform well in science. After the initial interaction, the teacher was aware that a certain percentage of the class performed way below average; yet, he did not water down their spirit. I remember the way he used to acknowledge even some insignificant improvement made in his tests by comments such as “You are making good progress so far”. Primarily, this teacher focused on the perseverance, strategies, and efforts the students put towards improvement as opposed to praising talent (Dweck 5). The result was that we changed our attitude and focused more on self-improvement.
In Carol Dweck’s article titled, “Brainology” Dweck discusses the different mindsets that students have about intelligence. Some where taught that each person had a set amount of intelligence, while others were trained that intelligence is something they could develop and increase over time. in Dweck’s article she writes, “ It is a belief that intelligence can be developed that opens students to a love of learning, a belief in the power of effort and constrictive, determined reactions to setbacks” (Dweck pg. 2). Dweck is talking about a growth mind-set in which is how students perceive the growth of knowledge and that no one person is born with a certain amount of intelligence, it too can be trained and developed over time. By introducing Dweck’s ideas of a growth mind-set to students, students will enjoy learning and be less devastated by setbacks, because they know they can develop intelligence. Dweck also writes that students with a growth mind-set, “believe that intelligence is something that can be cultivated through effort and education. They
Psychologist, Carol S. Dweck in her well researched essay, “Brainology” analyzes how praise impacts mindset and how a growth mindset leads to greater success. She supports this claim by comparing the two different mindsets and how praise can affect them. She then proceeds to show praise leads to a fixed mindset harming a person by changing their views on effort. Finally, she argues that praise changes how and what people value, which can
Commending students effort encourages them to challenge themselves. Some may argue that complimenting children for their intelligence has the same
Meaning that when children grow up with praise such as “oh you must have been so smart to get an A on that test”, instead of “you must have worked really hard on that lesson”, children could take the praise to their intelligence the wrong way and think that since they are “smart” instead of their effort on a task which will cause them problems in the future and they might want to give up and quit. I have seen this first hand and this has actually happened to me before, so I know from experience that this could have a negative effect impact on a student not just students in elementary school but also adults who are going to college or young adults who are looking for a job. In contrast, some students love to get that kind of compliment but they would always end up expecting that so when I work with children I will be complimenting them on the effort they put into everything that they do. From now on, I will be praising children on their effort and not on their
Alexa, a junior in college, shares her ideas on Intelligence. Intelligence is determined by motivation to do required tasks. Motivation is necessary to complete basic tasks such as doing homework. Also for completing difficult tasks. Which allows someone to learn new things, (Hietpas). Alexa explains the necessity of motivation to complete simple tasks. For an individual to be intelligent they have to learn new things. To be able to learn new things, one has to have the motivation to learn. In addition, if someone does not have motivation, they will not be able to learn anything new. Therefore, never having the opportunity to become intelligent. A mutual trait between intelligent people is wanting to learn new things. Taylor mentions her father whom she believes is intelligent without a lot of education, “[My father is] motivated to constantly be learning new things. He is not told, he wants to learn,” (Nelson). In the quote Taylor analyzed her father who only had a high school education. She explains that he is someone she considers highly intelligent. Intelligence is determined by motivation to learn new things and the tasks done in one’s free time. Taylor’s father is intelligent because of the motivation to constantly be learning new things. He chooses to learn new things in his free time and has the motivation to do so. Although, he might not have had as much traditional school as
Every parent desires to have a child who will be successful in life. In “Brainology” author, Carol Dweck explains that there are consequences for praising children for their work. Dweck also explains that there are different types of mindsets that enable an individual’s development. She claims that there are two types of mindsets that people have. In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work ( Dweck 1). Furthermore growth mindset individuals love learning and are resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. (Dweck 1). One more theory, Dweck mentioned was fixed mindset. The author states “In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence
Sherman Alexie and I both had preconceived ideas of intelligence going into school. Expectations. Many people had expectations going into school. Sherman Alexie said “We were Indian children who were expected to be stupid”. He said that about when he was in school and everyone expected nothing out of him. My mom is an English teacher and my father is also a teacher so going into high school I am expected to be in top classes and they are expecting me to get very good grades. “A smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indians alike.” Sherman Alexie said that because he was one of those smart Indians and whenever he talked people ridiculed him. An academically challenged Murray might be ridiculed and
When children hear us say “ I like the way you did this or do that…” instead of “Good job, you did amazing…” we help encourage them to focus on our assessment and give them something to think about. I think its better to receive an evaluation instead of a “good job” because it gives you something to work on, to know where your strengths are, and where you can improve. If you think about a soccer game where a child did not score and is met with parents who only praise that child for their effort than their child does not get to process how they can try a different way to score next time because they already know how to get the reward of praise. Children grow from this and if we only focused on praising then they wouldn’t learn to make their own decisions.
If the child is praised for his or her intelligence, he or she will embrace the “fixed mindset” that one’s intelligence determines their success. It is crucial to praise the child’s strategies, efforts, and progress and how they approach the problem at hand. Dweck and colleagues created a math game that did just that. The game did not reward the child for getting the answer right; it rewarded the child for the progress, strategies, and efforts the child exerted while trying to solve the answer. In one study Dweck and colleagues did, they told one group of students when they learn something new and difficult and exceed their comfort zones, the neurons in their brain grow stronger.
In Carol S. Dweck’s work “The Perils and Promise of Praise,” Dweck addresses the problem of how to keep students motivated and what type of praise can help move them along. She talks about how their are two types of students. First, there are the fixed mind - set students, and they reject and fear challenges because it may make them seem dumb, because how they are viewed by others affects them tremendously. Also they believe intelligence is something you are born with and you can’t change how smart you are. The second kind are called growth mind - set students, and they believe that with effort you can learn and accomplish anything. They don’t fear challenge, instead they embrace it. Making mistakes or asking question that may make them seem
2. The parents get positive notes from the teachers praising the child for a something good they did. Maybe they helped a friend with a proje...
Success does not always stem from the amount intelligence we possess; being successful has a great deal to do with believing that we are capable. Working with special education children, has taught me so many things and this is one of them. In my first year as a paraprofessional, I worked with a child who was told he would never be smart. For his first three years of school, his teachers and parents did everything for him because they too, believed he would never be capable to do them himself. Those words and actions affected him more than they could ever imagine. He withheld any confidence or happiness and expressed many negative feelings about himself. On his first day at our school, we started him with basic skills that we knew he could be successful at. We amplified how amazing he was doing every day, we told him how smart he was and we never let him talk negatively about himself. Within a matter of weeks, the confidence that was omit began to appear. He began to get excited to come to class because of all the positive feedback he continuously received. Once he felt capable of success, he was absorbing and understanding what we were teaching alongside his peers. He began to excel to the point that he got the highest math score on a standardized test in his mainstream classroom! It was truly astonishing that as soon as he felt someone believed in him, he learned to believe in himself and he used that confidence to drive his success. The many experiences I have had like this one, reinforce that becoming a school psychologist is the ideal career for me.
We as educators and parents want our children to grow up to be the best that they can be. Are we helping them when we tell that they are doing a good job on something or are we hurting them? Some research has shown that praising a child with words like “Good Job” or “Way to Go” is not helping them build their self-esteem or grow as individuals. We need to do more to help them grow as individuals and learners. According to Alfie Kohn (2001) “praise is a verbal reward” (p. 1). He states in his article “Five Reasons to Stop Saying Good Job” that praise is also controlling (Kohn, 2001) Have you ever been at a restaurant or out to local grocery store (or even said to your own kids) and hear if you will be good I will buy you a treat. Controlling? Yes controlling, but in the classroom do we use the same type of praise to get our students to do the same thing?
According to Berk (2012), children with a history of parental criticism of their worth and performance give up easily when faced with a challenge and express shame and despondency after failing (p. 367)”. Knowing that children who come from a home where they are not being encouraged and are constantly being put down can help me as a teacher in my future classroom. Knowing this I know how important it is to encourage my students so that they can build up their self-esteem. Berk (2012) states, “Adults can avoid promoting self-defeating reactions by adjusting their expectations to children’s capacities, scaffolding children’s attempts at difficult tasks, and pointing out effort and improvement in children’s work or behavior (p.367)”. This is important for me as a future teacher so I know that not all students in my class are going to perform at the same level and that is okay. I will know to point out when a student is doing something good and showing improvement in their work even if it is not the best yet. I want all of my students to have high self-esteem and feel good about themselves and their work because, I know how important having high self-esteem is for a child and how it will help them throughout their